B+T Group: Driven by the Engineering Needs of its Customers

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At heart, B+T Group is a structural engineering firm. Over the years, B+T Group’s civil and electrical engineering capabilities have come into play in providing construction drawings to owners that need a permit to build the tower, and for the contractors that need to install equipment. But, ever since Chad Tuttle, President and CEO, and his business partner, Dinesh Bhat, co-founded the firm in 2000, structural analysis on existing cell towers has been job number one.

“To this day, every time someone touches their equipment on a tower, the jurisdiction and tower owner require a structural analysis to see that it’s not going to fail, but also they need to know the remaining capacity of the tower,” Tuttle said. One thing leads to another. When a tower would fail analysis due to being overstressed, the customer would ask B+T Group to do a structural modification. As soon as Tuttle added that service, he found that the firm’s customer base grew.

“What has really driven our growth has been trying to meet the needs of our customers,” Tuttle explained. “Tower modifications represent a different skill set, because now you’re adding CAD drawings to help figure out ways to reinforce that tower.”

The biggest spike in tower modifications since B+T Group opened shop occurred when the tower industry moved from using Rev. F to Rev. G of the structural standard ANSI/TIA-222. Because Rev. G was a more stringent structural standard, a lot of towers that passed under Rev. F failed under Rev. G. From 2006 to 2017, about 20 percent of the existing towers received structural reinforcement, according to Tuttle.

Changes to the standard made in Rev. H reduced the number of tower modifications in the last three years, but Tuttle expects that number to tick up in the future due to the current capacity that is being gobbled up by the deployment of DISH Network’s nationwide facilities-based 5G network.

With the advent of 4G LTE networks, radios moved out of the shelter and up the tower. The heavier antenna equipment that began to be mounted on towers added weight but did not affect the wind loading of the tower. Instead, it added stress to the antenna mounts, which created the possibility of failure. This gave B+T Group another engineering service it could provide to its customers.

“About four years ago, antenna mount analysis became a whole new deliverable that we began to provide,” Tuttle said. “Now, many times when modifications are done on a tower, you do a structural analysis of the tower, and then you do a separate structural analysis report on the mount.”

As B+T Group has completed tens of thousands of structural analyses over the years, one thing has changed. Computer software has become a lot more sophisticated. Tasks that took days in the past now take hours.

Still, there was a big problem B+T Group’s engineers faced, whether they were doing a structural analysis, a mount analysis, or a set of drawings. They needed to know the existing configuration and exact dimensions of the tower, including the specifications of the mount and the configuration of the antennas. For many years, that required people climbing the tower to make manual measurements and sketch drawings. The process was time consuming and could be inaccurate. Photographs and dimensions could be missed.

This dilemma is what led B+T Group to begin using photogrammetry with drones in 2013. From there, the engineers developed the proprietary Site360 technology, which allows sites to be inspected in 360-degree, highly accurate detail.

“I saw that we could go out there with one of these drones, take a bunch of beautiful photographs in a proper fashion from a vantage point that you’ve never had before, right from the drone flying eye to eye with the antennas,” Tuttle said. “But you could also create a three-dimensional model, known as a digital twin, and be able to analyze the tower from every angle.”

Technology like Site360 helps B+T Group deal with dual challenges of price and speed they see on a daily basis. “Everybody wants everything done quicker and cheaper,” Tuttle told Inside Towers. “And so, we certainly want to stay competitive and do things faster.”

As a professionally licensed engineering firm, B+T Group’s first obligation is to watch out for the safety of the public and protect the assets and the structural capacity of its customers’ equipment. “While we support customers with our engineering and field services expertise, our foundation is built on taking care of our customers,” Tuttle said. “Now, we’re a full-service wireless engineering, construction and technical services firm dedicated to building and maintaining the safest, most reliable wireless network infrastructure in the country.”

For more information on B+T Group’s engineering services, visit here.

 

By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor

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